GOP Health Bill Could Let Insurers Cap Spending On Expensive Patients

Clara Hardy (middle) with her parents, Robert and Chrissy. Clara, who lives in North Carolina, needed expensive surgery and other procedures right after birth to save her life. The family’s insurance policy paid most of the cost.

Alex Olgin/WFAE

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Alex Olgin/WFAE

Clara Hardy (middle) with her parents, Robert and Chrissy. Clara, who lives in North Carolina, needed expensive surgery and other procedures right after birth to save her life. The family’s insurance policy paid most of the cost.

Alex Olgin/WFAE

The health care legislation under discussion in the Senate could allow states to remove some of the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections — including the prohibition that keeps insurers from limiting how much they’ll pay for medically needy, expensive patients. Clara Hardy’s parents worry about the Senate bill for just this reason.

These days, 6-year-old Clara’s biggest struggle is holding her breath long enough to touch the bottom of the neighborhood pool. But immediately after she was born in 2011, she couldn’t even breathe. She had a serious birth defect called a congenital diaphragmatic hernia.